Codies announces Overlord

Codemasters is encouraging you to be evil again. Having already signed ArchLord - a game in which one player gets supreme control over an entire MMO each month - now it's peddling Triumph Studios' Overlord, in which players take on the role of a big nasty bad guy and order minions around to do their bidding.

Due out next summer on PC and Xbox 360, it's billed as a darkly comic game about becoming an evil overlord. You stumble, near death, out of the old Overlord's Dark Tower and then take on "twisted parodies of classic fantasy scenarios and characters", using impish minions to fetch, fight and generally sacrifice themselves for your greater good (well, evil).

"Overlord offers a wealth of freedom and allows players to experience classic fantasy like never before. Working with the minions, players can loot and pillage their way through the game's world or maybe resist the temptations of evil. In Overlord, player choices truly shape the world," says Lennart Sas, director at Triumph.

The game's due to be shown off at E3, and we'll be taking a look. In the meantime, you can take a look at a couple of screenshots.